Show Summary

Lou, Joe, and Cliff Waters are three brothers living in south Philadelphia. The older brothers receive the shock of their lives when youngest brother Cliff runs away from the altar on what is supposed to be his wedding day. His reason: he's gay.
Lou is the oldest and a construction worker. He insists that someone talked Cliff into being a homosexual. Middle brother Joe is a former pro football player who runs a restaurant, is overprotective of teenage daughter Penny, and tries to maintain peace between his two brothers. Cliff is the youngest brother. He frequently finds himself in arguments with his brothers and with his best friend, flamboyantly gay writer/editor Donald Maltby.

That was the "Will & Grace" of todays show.....that started it all.

This show was a great show and had a lot of characters in it. Great writings on situations and everyday dealings. Dont know why they ever took it off the air. Now days, they show more then those topics and more touching and feeling is going on in todays shows. How about they bring it back and see how it tests to this "Other" generation of peoples.? I think the ratings would be far more better and it would probably even top the charts and become one of the top 5 comedy shows.moreless

Really funny show that should still be on the air!

I love this show. The ensemble cast is full of TV favorites including Robert Walden, Brandon Maggart and Phillip Charles Mackenzie. The comedy reminds me of the hours of joy I got growing up watching Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Red Skelton and other wonderful sketch comedians and enjoyable slapstick. The show tackled tough issues and didn't always take the easy way out and that alone made it worth watching. The only real downside was that it was on Showtime, so you weren't able to see it without paying for the channel. Still, it opened the doors for later shows like QAF.moreless

One of the best shows there ever was. In league with M*A*S*H and The Dick Van Dyke Show. They just don\'t make them like they used to.

This is one of those shows that you can watch each episode over and over and still find something new to laugh about because you were too busy laughing to catch it all the first, second, third,...time around. Every episode is like that to some degree. All families should have a Lou, the thinks he\\\'s tough teddy bear who\\\'s a few cans shy a six pack. Joe, the has been pro football player, who owns a restaurant instead of a car dealership. Cliff, the hunk who explodes out of the closet, who no one wants to accept that this guy next door likes guys. Then there is Donald, the regular, who has swishing down to a \\\"T\\\", accessorizes better than Martha Stewart, and is as debonair as Cary Grant. Kelly, the stacked, tough as nails waitress and Penny, Joe\\\'s comming of age, wants to be stacked daughter, round out the well rounded cast. A must see sitcom for a laugh a minute.moreless

Before Brothers there were no made-for-cable TV shows, and no homosexual characters. The show broke ground, but suffered in later years from lack of continuity and flawed attempts at character development.moreless

It seems hard to believe in the 21st century, but when Brothers debuted in 1984, it was the first TV series to feature gay characters. It was also the first made-for-pay/cable program, something that is now so common. Philip Charles MacKenzie, who played the flamboyant editor Donald Maltby, was also the first recipient of the “best actor” Cable Ace Award (which is now defunct since the Emmys began allowing eligibility for cable and pay programs). Brothers, however, did not begin as a “preachy” show. The series focused on the bond among three brothers who grew up and still lived in South Philadelphia. It was a situation comedy, and a FUNNY sitcom, that just happened to have homosexuals among the characters.The differences in the three men ran the gamut. Youngest brother Cliff leaves a bride at the altar on his wedding day, proclaiming he cannot go through with the wedding because he’s gay. Oldest brother Lou (hilariously played throughout the series by Brandon Maggart) is a construction worker, blue collar to the core, and not the brightest bulb in the package. He said he had to quit school in the seventh grade because he got drafted. Middle brother Joe is a retired football place kicker and the one with the tedious task of trying to keep the peace between older and younger siblings. When Cliff says he has to tell Lou the real reason he called off the wedding because “Lou’s my brother, blood is thick,” Joe hastily reminds him, “Lou is thicker. You want blood? Tell Lou.” Joe is divorced and overly protective of teenage daughter Penny (“All of the sudden we’re Mormons,” Penny complains when Joe sends her home to keep her from seeing Joe’s married friend in the restaurant with what Cliff refers to as “a bimbo”). Cliff’s best friend is Donald Maltby, proudly and flamboyantly gay, upset that “Hallmark doesn’t even make a card” for someone coming out of the closet. Rounding out the characters was Kelly Hall, a waitress at Joe’s restaurant The Point After. The ensemble cast worked together splendidly with good scripts that kept the laughs coming while addressing serious issues (such as one first season episode where Cliff was beaten up in a park because he was gay, second season episodes where Donald had to confront his dying father who had disowned Donald when he came out of the closet and tell his former Air Force squadron members about his homosexuality, and a classic episode dealing with a former football friend of Joe’s who had AIDS). For the first two seasons, Brothers was the funniest program on television – cable OR network.Brothers, however, had problems. There were continuity errors that piled up as the seasons progressed and the writers tried to develop characters without checking previous scripts. Most notable were the age problems. Lou was a Korean War veteran. (When teased by Donald for dancing with other men in Korea, Lou said, “That was different. We thought we was gonna die.”) However, the final episode in 1989 featured Lou celebrating his 51st birthday. That would have put his birthday in 1938, making him too young (12 when the Korean War began) to have been in the Army during the Korean War. Similarly, Donald, in the last season, celebrated both his 15 year college reunion and his 20th high school reunion. Like Lou, however, Donald was a veteran – an Air Force pilot in Vietnam. A five year span between high school and college would have allowed only one year for military service, and it’s impossible to learn to be a pilot – ESPECIALLY a fighter pilot – in the span of one year. (The military also demands more service out of their pilots because of the extent of the training.)The worst problem, however, was the unceremonious departure of Robin Riker’s character Kelly in the middle of the fourth season. Kelly was an integral part of the show: female “voice of reason” for teenage Penny, continuous source of retorts to Lou’s less-than-intelligent comments, and friend to all. After Joe began dating Sam in the fourth season, Kelly vanished. The second of two flashback episodes had Riker listed as a “guest star” instead of a former series regular. It is inexcusable for a series to have a character to just disappear without any explanation (and, worse, to have that character come back for the first of the “flashback” episodes as if she had never been away!).The fourth season was the turning point for Brothers, the time when the program “jumped the shark.” Mary Ann Pascal’s Sam as a replacement for Riker was a far inferior female lead character (and this move also left Joe without a waitress at his restaurant). It was also at this time that the show became less humorous and more “preachy.” Every character suffered in this switch. When the final season began the bad episodes far outweighed the good, with obvious and forced storylines such as Sam and Joe marrying and having a baby. By the time the 115th and final episode aired it was almost a relief to see the show go away instead of the conclusion being a celebration of a once-great program. (The final episode, where Lou consults a medium to talk to the ghost of his dead father to get advice on his birthday, may stand as one of the absolute WORST series finales of all-time.)The show served as a springboard for Philip Charles MacKenzie to jump from actor to director. He directed several episodes of Brothers, and went on to direct a number of TV series including Frasier. His freewheeling performance as Donald Maltby stands as the highlight of Brothers. In spite of the flaws, especially in the later seasons when poor scripts were delivered by actors who seemed to be tired of both the script and the characters, Brothers still had enough memorable moments to rank as a classic program.moreless

More Info About This Show

Categories

Important:
You must only upload images which you have created yourself or that you are expressly authorised or licensed to upload. By clicking "Publish", you are confirming that the image fully complies with TV.com’s Terms of Use and that you own all rights to the image or have authorization to upload it.

Please read the following before uploading

Do not upload anything which you do not own or are fully licensed to upload. The images should not contain any sexually explicit content, race hatred material or other offensive symbols or images. Remember: Abuse of the TV.com image system may result in you being banned from uploading images or from the entire site – so, play nice and respect the rules!